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Post by ferdzy on Dec 20, 2012 20:30:37 GMT -5
Got some peas a couple of years back from OSC (Ontario Seed Company) as Dwarf Grey Sugar (snow pea). Here's their description:
"This is the earliest and most dwarf sugar pea. The short 6cm (2.5") long pods are light green, curved, sweet and very tender. For best quality, pods must be harvested before they develop large peas. At 60-75 cm (24"-30") tall, this good yielding pea does not need staking and is often grown as an ornamental for its pretty purple flowers."
So, we planted our taller peas in the middle of the bed with Dwarf Grey Sugar on either side, a typical arrangement for us. The only problem was that our "dwarf" greys grew to 6 feet! I wrote to the company and they swore they had sent out Dwarf Grey Sugar. So. I'm actually keeping seed from these; they were tasty, productive, reasonably heat-resistant. Just not dwarf. I also found a single pod of purple peas which I kept.
Does anyone know what happened here? Any comments?
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Post by templeton on Dec 20, 2012 23:26:41 GMT -5
Peas are inbreeders, so unlikely to cross by accident, according to the literature. Even an accidental cross in the field, should it occur, is unlikely to have occurred across multiple flowers and multiple plants, giving you a complete crop of talls. There are multiple dwarfing genes, but I think they are all recessive, so any cross between a tall and a short will result in tall offspring.
Purple pod needs 3 dominant genes. DGS you say has purple flowers, so it's already carrying at least one of the genes, A for turning anthocyanin on.
You would still need the other 2 genes to get fully purple pods (either alone will give purple splashed pods in varying degrees).
My guess is they sent you the wrong seed, and someone forgot to clean the seed machine, so you got a purple podded one in as well.
T
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Post by raymondo on Dec 21, 2012 4:32:01 GMT -5
... I also found a single pod of purple peas which I kept. Purple peas T, not pods, so the pea skin is purple. That could be environmental, not sure. You'll know when you grow them out I guess. Tall could simply mean crossed up somewhere though T is right. Logistics is against it. That leaves a simple seed mix up. |
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Post by templeton on Dec 21, 2012 6:02:22 GMT -5
 Oops! Seed coat colour is complex. The info is here if you want to untangle it. <http://data.jic.bbsrc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/pgene/default.asp?SubClassID=10&S=SEARCH&Search=SubClass> T
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 21, 2012 8:02:04 GMT -5
... I also found a single pod of purple peas which I kept. Purple peas T, not pods, so the pea skin is purple. That could be environmental, not sure. You'll know when you grow them out I guess. Tall could simply mean crossed up somewhere though T is right. Logistics is against it. That leaves a simple seed mix up. A random chance is most likey. Back when I growing my peas (a sort of found grex that had heavy expression of the Marmoreous gene (along with whichever one cause little purple-black spots and blotches all over the seed coat) I had a pod that did a reverse; instead of making peas that were green with purple spots when fresh (the marmoreus gene's brown mottling is usually only visible once the peas dry) that pod had purple peas with green spots. Quie pretty actually until they dried down (when the M gene filled the green areas in with brown mottling). Next year planted those (and only those, something ate the rest of my seed that year), and they all flipped back. |
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 21, 2012 8:47:48 GMT -5
I had some purple skinned peas in my purple podded soup peas this year. I'll let you know what they do.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 21, 2012 8:50:36 GMT -5
Oh, these were purple when dried for several weeks (unless months of drying changes the colour - I know it does darken it)
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Post by ferdzy on Dec 21, 2012 9:52:08 GMT -5
Yes, I'm pretty sure they sent me the wrong thing! I was just a bit perplexed that other than the height, they met the description for Dwarf Grey Sugar pretty well. May have been a translation error somewhere in the supply chain... I understand a lot of seeds are coming from China these days (like everything else!)
As for seed colour, the seeds in general are wrinkled, a medium khaki colour with small purple speckles. It was just the one pod that was entirely purple. We'll see if that persists in the offspring, and once I get over the novelty of it, if I care. (i.e, how do they taste?)
Does anyone know of another named variety that meets this description? A lot like dwarf grey sugar, only tall? Flowers were purple, as advertised.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 21, 2012 11:05:52 GMT -5
Were the purple ones smaller than the mostly khaki ones? In mine, most of the peas are khaki with minimal wrinkles but a few, very few, had splotches of purple. The smaller ones were nearly entirely purple. Again, I only got a few out of a lot of khaki seeds. And they were not all in the same pod. I think it was from one or two pods.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 21, 2012 11:19:33 GMT -5
Well if the "normal" peas have purple speckles, then the all purple ones could simply be an overexpression; peas with purple spots so big they bled into one another. I don't have it any more, but one pea I pulled out of a pile of Austrian speckled was a perfect split, purple on one side green on the other.
As for named varities that are purely purple seeded, about the only one I can think of is Purple Passion. It is sort of natural for smaller seeds to have heavier expression of color, the small surface area tends to concentrate the pigments. And some of the color genes DO tend to segregate along with ones for smaller seed size (I know the one for black hilums does)
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Post by ferdzy on Dec 21, 2012 11:35:34 GMT -5
Telsing, they were all in one pod and they were about average size and shape I would say.
Blue, I would assume that it is over-expression, as you say. This is not a purple seeded pea; that one pod was an anomaly.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 21, 2012 12:24:54 GMT -5
Especially if they are only "mostly" purple. Truly compleltely entirely purple pea seeds are in my experiance rather rare, you nearly ALWAYS have a little washing out of color along the sides. I have one in my reference collection from a bag of Austrian speckled, but that's just it, I have ONE, one out of a 5 lb bag (incidentally, if you are looking to simply play around with traits, the Austrian speckled winter bags that Seeds of Change has is a very good resourcel thier mix has a suprising number of older, more unusual gene traits in it)
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 21, 2012 12:35:22 GMT -5
You're a great resource blue! I'm always interested in playing around with traits or at least mostly always! The seeds I have were from peas that I've been growing out for at least four years and I've never noticed any purple markings before. Could be gene pollution of some sort  i guess or a couple peas accidentally planted in the wrong spot that were also purple podded? Anyhow I thought it was interesting. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 21, 2012 13:43:58 GMT -5
One warning though, while the bags have pretty much everything, nearly all of them come along with a much smaller seed size. The "normal" sized peas are nearly all greens and browns with or without speckling. It is only in the smaller seeds that you start to see peas with brown or black hilums, or marmorated seed coats.
I don't think the bags have what I call the "drum" trait*, but then I haven't seen that since around 2000-2001 before the lentil switch. I still have one seed with it but of course that is now 12-13 years old, heavily handled and probably non vialbe. Plus the trait isn't really visible unless you get HEAVY pollination so every pod is filled to capacity. Just as well, it probably makes spiltting the peas (and gettin off the coats) a lot harder
*the "drum trait" is one that affects how far apart the seeds are in a pod. As you have probably noticed, a lot of older peas have seeds that push agaisnt each other rather hard, so the mature seeds have somewhat flattened tops and bottoms. In the "drum" type the seeds REALLY push up against each other and agains the sides of the pod, so that the mature seed is compeletely cylindrical and "drum-shaped". Ive never seen them in pod (as I said, with my small plot and poor pollination, it's pretty rare for every potential seed in a pod to take, so most peas don't have their neighbors make it, and have a lot of grow room. I also suspect that the first time I planted them out, the crossed with the "VS" type peas I had been getting out of coriander and that shrunk them even more ("VS" stands for vetch seed, peas that were so small seeded I had trouble telling them from vetches on glance (I had to work it out by measuing hilums)
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 24, 2012 10:08:57 GMT -5
I've seen this drum trait before. I *think* it was in some petite pois seeds but not 100% sure.
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i guess or a couple peas accidentally planted in the wrong spot that were also purple podded? Anyhow I thought it was interesting.